Tendai
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A Mahayana Buddhist tradition with esoteric elements, officially established in Japan in 806 by the monk Saichō
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tndaɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tendai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 188K(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 408K
- PLPoland1 in 709K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 20 (measured from records)
- 1 in 188K (inferred from the name graph)
271 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A Mahayana Buddhist tradition with esoteric elements, officially established in Japan in 806 by the monk Saichō.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tendai counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 271 | 1 in 1.2M | 142 | — | 3 |
| PL Poland | 54 | 1 in 709K | 31 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 25 | 1 in 408K | 25 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 17 | 1 in 1M | 10 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 4 | 1 in 188K | 4 | — | — |
271 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Tendai is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, aus Simbabwe stammender weibl.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Tendai Mtawarirab. 1985ZWSouth African rugby union footballer
- Tendai Mzungub. 1986AUAustralian rules footballer
- Tendai Matareb. 1987CHSwiss musician
- Tendai Ndorob. 1988ZWZimbabwean association football player (1985-2025)
- Tendayi Darikwab. 1991GBnot in their usual nameZimbabwean footballer
- Tendai Chatarab. 1991ZWZimbabwean cricket player (born 1991)
- Tendai GadzikwaUSresearcher
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 13 countries.
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Tendai mean, and where does it come from?
- A Mahayana Buddhist tradition with esoteric elements, officially established in Japan in 806 by the monk Saichō. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Tendai?
- A machine transcription gives /tndaɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Tendai a male or female name?
- Tendai is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Tendai have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 271 people named Tendai, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Tendai most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tendai is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 188 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Tendai?
- In the United States, the national register counted 271 people named Tendai in 2020, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
What do you want to know about Tendai?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/tendaiThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Tendai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.